Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.4, 1865).djvu/312

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304
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304 C^SAR. and not care for hazarding both a danger at present and a blemish for the future. And so it proved, for they were so far from bearing the stroke of the javelins, that they could not stand the sight of them, but turned about, and covered their faces to secure them. Once in disorder, presently they turned about to fly ; and so most shame- fully ruined all. For those who had beat them back, at once outflanked the infantry, and falling on their rear, cut them to pieces. Pompey, who commanded the other wing of the army, when he saw his cavalry thus broken and flying, was no longer himself, nor did he now remem- ber that he was Pompey the Great, but like one whom some god had deprived of his senses, retired to his tent without speaking a word, and there sat to expect the event, till the whole army was routed, and the enemy appeared upon the works which were thrown up before the camp, where they closely engaged with his men, who were posted there to defend it. Then first he seemed to have recovered his senses, and uttering, it is said, only these words, " What, into the camp too ? " he laid aside his general's habit, and putting on such clothes as might best favor his flight, stole off. What fortune he met with afterwards, how he took shelter in Egypt, and was mur- dered there, we tell you in his Life. Ccesar, when he came to view Pompey's camp, and saw some of his opponents dead upon the ground, others dying, said, with a groan, " This they would have ; they brought me to this necessity. I, Caius Cassar, after succeeding in so many wars, had been condemned, had I dismissed my army."* These words, Pollio says, Csesar spoke in Latin at that time, and that he himself wrote them in Greek ; adding, that those who were killed at the taking of the

  • " Hoc voluerunt ; tantis rebus sem," quoted from Asinius Pollio,

gestis C. Cassar condernnatus essem, by Suetonius. nisi ab exercitu auxilium petis-